MR. TOOLE'S REMINISCENCES.*

THE title on the back of these volumes, " Reminiscences of J. L. Toole, Joseph Hatton," is, on the whole, a fairer index to their contents than the description which appears on the title-

page. It is true that Mr. Toole has contributed the preface, and that the greater part of the contents are cast in the form of conversations or interviews for the accuracy of which Mr. Toole has gone bail. But if Mr. Toole is the good fellow we take him to be, we feel pretty certain that he would never have permitted his perambulating Boswell to have tacked on to his narrative such superfluous fringes of eulogy as those to be found on pp. 34-35 of Vol. II. This is but one of several passages of which Mr. Hatton remarks that Mr. Toole will probably not see them until these volumes are in the hands of the public. They have been in- serted with the best of intentions, but they are wholly out of place in a " zoography," or sketch of a living person- With these deductions, Mr. Hatton has fulfilled his peculiar and not very dignified undertaking very creditably. The mention of the viands and liquids—the sherry-and-bitters.

Madeira, and the brace of birds—consumed by him preparatory to his first " interview " with Mr. Toole, strikes us as hardly germane to his subject. Under his manipulation, the names of Brillat-Savarin and Mr. Halswelle assume somewhat fantastic shapes. The mention, again, of Calverly's (sic) " Geminii et Virgo" is not very happy. But he has put together in a readable form a great mass of anecdotes—some of them quite excellent—bearing on the life of a popular actor on and off the stage ; and he has certainly contrived to give us, what books of the sort generally fail utterly to give, a clear notion of the individuality of the central figure an inveterate farceur, with a soft heart and a real sense of the pathos that underlies humorous or grotesque externals. In evidence of this, we may quote the following charming little story of "Bob Romer," a well-known member of the Adelphi company :-

" Bob kept a blackbird in his dressing-room at the theatre, and was in the habit of feeding it with little tit-bits of meat from the butcher's. He would begin early in the week with sixpennyworth then it would get down to threepence, and occasionally, when he was rather hard up, he would share these tit-bits with the black- bird, cooking them himself on his little fire. He was not ex- travagant, and his salary was not princely. Occasionally he would be rather short at the end of the week. The butcher was a great admirer of his. Bob had a genial, pleasant way with him, and • Reminiscences of J. L. Toole. Related by Himself, and Chronicled by Joseph Hatton. 2 vols. London Hurst and Blackett.

had many humble friends. One pennyworth of tit-bits,' said Bob to the messenger at the end of the week ; 'only one penny- worth—for the blackbird.' It was always for the blackbird.' It saved his pride, poor old chap, and he had a certain amount of that commodity."

Another story of the same actor, of a purely farcical character, is also worth quoting

" He was one of those innocent kind of fellows who do not know when they are being chaffed, or if they are conscious of it, are willing to share in the fun themselves. Bob once played 'Othello' for a benefit, and in his famous address to the Senate, a number of his friends had a box and made curious rejoinders to his con- fessions, such, for instance, as when he said,- . That I have ta'en away this old man's daughter,

It is most true,'

they remarked, 'Oh, Bob !' and when he added-

' Tree, I have married her, they exclaimed cheerfully, Ah, well ! that's all right, Bob.' At the line,—

'Rude am I in speech,'

they said, 'No, Bob, not at all; you do yourself an injustice,' and so on ; and the memorable performance being over, Bob was as merry as the rest at the supper which celebrated it."

Romer, in fact, was unconsciously humorous. Paul Bedford, on the other hand, was naturally funny, as we can well imagine from Mr. Toole's description of him :—

" He grew to be very fond of me, used to call me father, and generally when he did so prefaced it with a kind of whistle, or with a sudden blowing of the lips. It was the same action as that which always prefaced his believe you, mi bhoy !' He not only saw the great Edmund Kean act, but acted with him on one

occasion Paul had only just joined the stock company at Bath, his native town, and when he was asked to play the Duke of Norfolk' to the eminent one's Richard the Third,' Paul was horrified and refused the part ; but his manager prevailed upon him to play it, offering to teach it him and to ensure his getting through all right. Well, father,' he said, 'the great man came, and there was I in a grand new dress as the " Duke." It was the Bosworth-field scene when I got into trouble. When I described Richmond's army to Richard as a tattered host of greedy scarecrows, and so poor, so famished, that their executors, the greedy daws, fly hovering over their heads, I did not say daws, father—haw, haw—I said Jack-daws. The house burst into a laugh, and so did Richard, and as I went off my manager was in an awful way; but I did not know what I had done until he told me. At the close of the play Mr. Kean sent for me to his room, and I felt uncommonly ill, father; but I screwed my courage to the sticking-place, went in, and at once implored the great man's forgiveness. " Make no apology," said the wondrous actor ; " you have made me laugh more heartily than I have laughed for years." And would you believe it, father, he invited me to dinner, and that was the beginning of our friendship.'"

Mr. Toole, like almost all the actors of any eminence amongst us, gained his experience and matured his art by long association with that now obsolete institution, the provincial stock company. To give some idea of the range and arduous- ness of such apprenticeship, Mr. Toole mentions that he has "played as many as eighteen different parts in a week, some of

them new studies entirely." Those were the days, as Mr. Hatton remarks, of small salaries and laborious service, and Edinburgh, the school in which Mr. Toole graduated, was perhaps the hardest of them all. It made things easier for the actor later in his career, as he deliberately states, but at the time " it was hard work and no mistake." Many distinguished actors have begun with burlesque and low comedy, and worked their way up ; but with Mr. Toole it was different.

His first appearances in London were in parts which did not give full scope to his peculiar humour. It was only gradually that he established his claim to be entrusted with the roles in which Liston, Robson, and Keeley had distinguished them- selves. With the two latter he was personally intimate, and cordially acknowledges the advantage he derived from their hints and advice. Of Robson he says justly that "there were flashes in his mock-tragedy that were magnificent, over- powering;" and in general, it is agreeable to notice that Mr. Toole's appreciation is not confined to tragedians, but is cordially extended to all comedians, living as well as dead. One of the quaintest anecdotes in these pages is that of Compton, who was on one occasion mistaken for a clergyman at a table crluite, and called upon to say grace. " Compton

was staggered for a moment, all the grace he knew slipping at once straight out of his memory. Like myself, he was a church-goer; and in the emergency a familiar passage from the Prayer-Book occurred to him as not unsuitable to the occasion,—' 0 Lord, open thou our lips, and our months shall show forth thy praise.'" Mr. Toole's own humour is too well known to need extended illustration ; but we may be allowed to cite a couple of instances. On the

subject of " orders " he says,—" A chemist's assistant wrote for an order, his claim being that he had once prepared a pre- scription for me, and had made up the wrong medicine, fortunately without injury; and this had always made him

follow my career with the greatest interest." The following retort, again, is worthy of Douglas Jerrold :—" A friend of mine said to me, You never get cut up in Manchester.' I replied,—' I do not know about that. I often appear in three pieces." In a book of this sort, it is only natural that one should encounter a few " chestnuts," and in this connection we ought to be grateful to Mr. Hatton for contributing on so good authority as that of Mr. Jefferson (" Rip Tan Winkle "), the following very plausible explanation of that now familiar Americanism :-

"' There is a melodrama,' says Mr. Jefferson, 'but little known to the present generation, written by William Dillon, and called The Broken Sword. There are two characters in it—one a Captain Xavier, and the other the comedy part of Pablo. The captain is a sort of Baron Munchausen, and in telling of his exploits says :— " I entered the woods of Colloway, when suddenly from the thick boughs of a cork-tree —"—Pablo interrupts him with the words, " A chestnut, Captain ; a chestnut."—" Bah !" replies the Captain ; " Booby, I say a cork-tree !"—" A chestnut," reiterates Pablo. " I should know as well as you, having heard you tell the tale these twenty-seven times."—William Warren, who had often played the part of Pablo, was at a stage-dinner a few years ago, when one of the gentlemen present told a story of doubtful age and originality. —"A chestnut," murmured Mr. Warren, quoting from the play, "I have heard you tell the tale these twenty-seven times."—The application of the lines pleased the rest of the table, and when the party broke up, each helped to spread the story and Mr. Warren's commentary. And that,' says Mr. Jefferson, is what I really believe to be the origin of the word " chestnut."' " Such a book as that which we are discussing is not without its serious side. These pages contain ample evidence that a comedian may be a man of strong feelings, and find the truest happiness not in his stage triumphs, but his domestic circle. And the successive bereavements which have befallen Mr. Toole enlist an added sympathy when we reflect on the strain which is entailed in the representation of farcical roles when the heart is heavy with the loss of an only son and an only daughter. An actor's life is full of the irony of fate of which the public can know but little.